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Vienna porcelain is the product of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory (German: Kaiserlich privilegierte Porcellain Fabrique), a porcelain manufacturer in Alsergrund in Vienna, Austria. It was founded in 1718 and continued until 1864.
Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating materials, generally including kaolin, in a kiln to temperatures between 1,200 and 1,400 °C. The toughness, strength, and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises mainly from vitrification and the formation of the mineral mullite within the body at these high temperatures. Though definitions vary, porcelain can be divided into three main categories: hard-paste, soft-paste and bone china. The category that an object belongs to depends on the composition of the paste used to make the body of the porcelain object and the firing conditions.
Alsergrund is the ninth district of Vienna, Austria. It is located just north of the first, central district, Innere Stadt. Alsergrund was incorporated in 1862, with seven suburbs. The area is densely populated, with a lot of government-built housing. According to the census of 2001, there were 37,816 inhabitants over 2.99 square km.
Vienna is the federal capital and largest city of Austria, and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primate city, with a population of about 1.9 million, and its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 7th-largest city by population within city limits in the European Union. Until the beginning of the 20th century, it was the largest German-speaking city in the world, and before the splitting of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in World War I, the city had 2 million inhabitants. Today, it has the second largest number of German speakers after Berlin. Vienna is host to many major international organizations, including the United Nations and OPEC. The city is located in the eastern part of Austria and is close to the borders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. These regions work together in a European Centrope border region. Along with nearby Bratislava, Vienna forms a metropolitan region with 3 million inhabitants. In 2001, the city centre was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In July 2017 it was moved to the list of World Heritage in Danger.
The firm was Europe's second-oldest porcelain factory after Meissen porcelain, and for 25 years the two remained the only European producers. Initially it was a private enterprise, founded by Claude du Paquier,[1] an official of the Viennese Imperial court, but in 1744 it was rescued from financial difficulties when bought by the Empress Maria Theresa, and thereafter remained an asset of the Emperors.[2]
Meissen porcelain or Meissen china was the first European hard-paste porcelain. It was developed starting in 1708 by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus. After his death that October, Johann Friedrich Böttger continued von Tschirnhaus's work and brought porcelain to the market. The production of porcelain at Meissen, near Dresden, started in 1710 and attracted artists and artisans to establish one of the most famous porcelain manufacturers known throughout the world. Its signature logo, the crossed swords, was introduced in 1720 to protect its production; the mark of the swords is one of the oldest trademarks in existence.
1790s Sorgenthal period cup and saucer, probably mainly intended to be displayed in a cabinet rather than used.
The wares from the earlier, private period before 1744 are the most sought-after today, if only because production was lower and so the pieces are much more rare. These are often called Du Paquier porcelain from the Du Paquier factory .[3] The other high point, "perhaps the factory's most glamorous period",[4] was from 1784 to 1805 when a variety of innovative wares in broadly Neoclassical styles were produced, now with Sèvres porcelain the main influence. Wares were used as diplomatic gifts by the emperors, and exports to Turkey were significant.
The manufacture nationale de Sèvres is one of the principal European porcelain manufactories. It is located in Sèvres, Hauts-de-Seine, France. It is the continuation of Vincennes porcelain, founded in 1738, which moved to Sèvres in 1756. It has been owned by the French crown or government since 1759, and has always maintained the highest standards of quality. Almost immediately, it replaced Meissen porcelain as the standard-setter among European porcelain factories, retaining this position until at least the 19th century.
Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan Peninsula in Southeast Europe. East Thrace, located in Europe, is separated from Anatolia by the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorous strait and the Dardanelles. Turkey is bordered by Greece and Bulgaria to its northwest; Georgia to its northeast; Armenia, the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan and Iran to the east; and Iraq and Syria to the south. Istanbul is the largest city, but more central Ankara is the capital. Approximately 70 to 80 per cent of the country's citizens identify as Turkish. Kurds are the largest minority; the size of the Kurdish population is a subject of dispute with estimates placing the figure at anywhere from 12 to 25 per cent of the population.
History
Sorgenthal period, early 1800s, Neoclassical cup and saucer
The factory was on Porzellangasse ("Porcelain Lane") in Alsergrund, now Vienna's 9th district. The history of the manufactory is often divided by German writers into five periods. The first period, used by all sources, was under its founder and first director du Paquier, who was given a monopoly for 25 years. This is therefore known as the "Du Paquier period", and many sources talk of "Du Paquier porcelain" and the "Du Paquier factory",[5] usually with a capital "D", although his actual name has a small "d". While Meissen and most later German factories were owned by the local ruler, and usually heavily funded, du Pacquier received only permission to manufacture, and many orders for wares, from the emperor, and the factory seems always to have been under-capitalized in his time. This situation lasted from 1718–1744, when the monopoly expired and the financial difficulties apparently came to a head; the state intervened by buying the factory,[6] which was then renamed as the "Imperial State Manufactory Vienna".
The districts of Vienna are the 23 named city sections of Vienna, Austria, which are numbered for easy reference. They were created from 1850 onwards, when the city area was enlarged by the inclusion of surrounding communities. Although they fill a similar role, Vienna's municipal districts are not administrative districts (Bezirke) as defined by the constitution; Vienna is a statutory city and as such is a single administrative district in its entirety.
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity. This contrasts with a monopsony which relates to a single entity's control of a market to purchase a good or service, and with oligopoly which consists of a few sellers dominating a market. Monopolies are thus characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce the good or service, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller's marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit. The verb monopolise or monopolize refers to the process by which a company gains the ability to raise prices or exclude competitors. In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices. Although monopolies may be big businesses, size is not a characteristic of a monopoly. A small business may still have the power to raise prices in a small industry.
The second period is the "Plastic period" (1744–1784), the third is the "Sorgenthal period",[7] or "Painterly period" (Malerische Periode) of 1784–1805, then the "Biedermeier period" (1805–1833) and finally the "Late Biedermeier period" (1833–1864).[8]
Plastic arts are art forms which involve physical manipulation of a plastic medium by molding or modeling such as sculpture or ceramics.
The Biedermeier period refers to an era in Central Europe between 1815 and 1848, during which the middle class grew in number, and arts appealed to common sensibilities. It began with the time of the Congress of Vienna at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and ended with the onset of the European Revolutions of 1848. Although the term itself is a historical reference, it is used mostly to denote the artistic styles that flourished in the fields of literature, music, the visual arts and interior design.
By the last quarter of the 18th century as many as 120,000 pieces annually were exported to the Ottoman Empire; these were typically brightly coloured, but less finely than those for European markets.[9] Many were sets of the small cups used for Turkish coffee.
The Ottoman Empire, historically known in Western Europe as the Turkish Empire or simply Turkey, was a state that controlled much of Southeast Europe, Western Asia and North Africa between the 14th and early 20th centuries. It was founded at the end of the 13th century in northwestern Anatolia in the town of Söğüt by the Oghuz Turkish tribal leader Osman I. After 1354, the Ottomans crossed into Europe, and with the conquest of the Balkans, the Ottoman beylik was transformed into a transcontinental empire. The Ottomans ended the Byzantine Empire with the 1453 conquest of Constantinople by Mehmed the Conqueror.
Turkish coffee is coffee prepared using very finely ground coffee beans, unfiltered. The same method is used in many Middle Eastern and Southeastern European countries.
The factory received a boost from the Congress of Vienna, in the course of which it was visited by a number of monarchs and other leading figures, although King George IV of Great Britain never went to Vienna and so missed the service he would have been presented with.[10] Although exports to the Ottoman Empire continued, by the 1860s the factory was suffering from increased competition from Bohemian factories in particular, and was eventually closed by the Austrian parliament in 1864, with the moulds and other equipment being given to the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna.[11] The wares are sometimes called "old Vienna" (or Alt Wien in German).[12]
Wares were hard-paste porcelain, and always of very high quality. Like most factories in the German-speaking world, it was founded with expertise provided by key workers enticed from Meissen porcelain, who brought the secrets of the Meissen materials and techniques with them, and the wares remained broadly similar to those made there, although the body was not exactly the same, and gradually improved. Initially mostly table wares were produced, often with a slightly blueish tinge to the plain body. European flowers were used in decoration from around 1730, before Meissen, and subsequently very widely used across European factories. As at Meissen, chinoiserie decoration was also often used, as were hunting and battle scenes.[14]
Vienna porcelain trembleuse cup from the du Paquier period, 1730
The Du Paquier period began the tradition of strong and varied colours, which was to remain a strength of Vienna porcelain. There was heavy use of openwork in some pieces. A very common style, called Laub- und Bandelwerk in German, has intricate painted borders or backgrounds of trellis, bandwork, palmettes and other very formalized plant motifs. Knobs and handles are often formed as animals, and sometimes people.[15]
Like other factories in major capitals, including Meissen, Capodimonte and Buen Retiro in Madrid, Vienna produced a few porcelain rooms for palaces, the only surviving example of which is now installed in the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna. However, the porcelain here does not cover all the wall space that is not window or mirror, as in other examples, but is a border around the wall-spaces, with matching plaques on the furniture.[16] Porcelain was used for diplomatic gifts; the Hermitage Museum retains most of a service made in 1735 for Czarina Anna Ivanovna of Russia, which included more than 40 tureens.[17] Other pieces are dispersed (the early Soviet government sold several pieces), and a tureen from the service made $365,000 at Christies in New York in 2014.[18]
Chief modellers included Johann Joseph Niedermeyer, working from 1747 to 1784, and Anton Grassi from 1778 to 1807,[19] who was sent to study classical remains in Rome for several months in 1792.[20] Neither quite achieved the charm of the light-hearted genre figures of other factories. Like Meissen and other German factories, some Vienna pieces were decorated by outside painters, or Hausmalers.[21]
A new director, Konrad von Sorgenthal, took over during a financial crisis in 1784 and changed the style of wares, following the fashion for Neoclassicism and taking some influence from Sèvres. Bright colours, extensive use of gold, and very detailed painting characterize the style, and set the typical Vienna style for decades to come. Another Neoclassical fashion in porcelain which Vienna embraced was the biscuit porcelain figure.[22] Many pieces of tableware, especially cups with saucers, were now essentially made for display in porcelain cabinets, rather than use.[23]
Sorgenthal employed painters known in other media: Anton Kothgasser (1769-1851) was also a painter of glass, and Moritz Michael Daffinger (1790-1849), the son of a painter for the factory, worked for them until 1809, before concentrating on painting portrait miniatures.[24]
The quality of wares was in decline by the later 1820s, when unsuccessful attempts began to revive the factory by producing cheaper wares from lower-quality materials, decorators paid on piecework, and some use of printed transfer. All were counter-productive, and production continued to reduce, although some high-quality pieces were produced until the end.[25]
Some moulds and undecorated fired "blanks" were bought by other factories, including Herend, and added to the considerable volume of imitations, "replicas" and downright forgeries that have copied Vienna porcelain. Other genuine Vienna pieces had their decoration scraped off to be repainted in a more elaborate style.[26]
Marks
No marks were used before the Imperial takeover in 1744, after which a "beehive-shaped shield" was used, either in blue or impressed. In 1783 impressed date mark were introduced, beginning with "83", then running from "801" for 1801.[27] Painters, and the turners responsible for the body, can often be identified by the numbers they were given, which were added to the underside of pieces, to ensure they were paid for the right pieces.[28]
Exhibitions
Imperial Privilege: Vienna Porcelain of Du Paquier, 1718–44 was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2009–2010.[29] To celebrate the 300th anniversary of the founding of the factory, the Museum of Applied Arts, Vienna has 300 Years of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory, an exhibition ending in September 2018, covering all periods of production in Vienna.[30] There is another at the Uffizi in Florence, which runs from 13 November 2018 to 10 March 2019, covering only the Du Paquier period and drawing from the collections of the Florence Porcelain Museum and the Liechtenstein collection.[31] The Frick Collection in New York also celebrated the anniversary with a dedicated installation in 2017–2018.[32]
Saucer, 1726, Du Paquier period
Scent bottle with gold mounts, c. 1730, Du Paquier period
Tureen, 1730s, with Laub- und Bandelwerk typical of the Du Paquier period.
The Vincennes porcelain manufactory was established in 1740 in the disused royal Château de Vincennes, in Vincennes, east of Paris, which was from the start the main market for its wares.
Kakiemon is a style of Japanese porcelain, with overglaze decoration called "enameled" ceramics. It was originally produced at the factories around Arita, in Japan's Hizen province from the Edo period's mid-17th century onwards. The style shares much in common with the Chinese "Famille Verte" style. The quality of its decoration was highly prized in the West and widely imitated by major European porcelain manufacturers during the Rococo period.
Soft-paste porcelain is a type of ceramic material in pottery, usually accepted as a type of porcelain. It is weaker than "true" hard-paste porcelain, and does not require either the high firing temperatures or the special mineral ingredients needed for that. There are many types, using a range of materials. The material originated in the attempts by many European potters to replicate hard-paste Chinese export porcelain, especially in the 18th century, and the best versions match hard-paste in whiteness and translucency, but not in strength. But the look and feel of the material can be highly attractive, and it can take painted decoration very well.
Chelsea porcelain is the porcelain made by the Chelsea porcelain manufactory, the first important porcelain manufactory in England, established around 1743–45, and operating independently until 1770, when it was merged with Derby porcelain. It made soft-paste porcelain throughout its history, though there were several changes in the "body" material and glaze used. Its wares were aimed at a luxury market, and its site in Chelsea, London, was close to the fashionable Ranelagh Gardens pleasure ground, opened in 1742.
In pottery hausmaler is a term for the artist, the style, and the pieces in hausmalerei, the process of buying pieces of pottery as plain "blanks", and then painting them in small workshops, or the homes of painters, before a final firing. In European pottery of the 17th to 19th centuries this was at certain times and places a significant part of production, and the decoration could be of very high quality.
Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov was a Russian chemist who developed Russian hard-paste porcelain; he was the founder of the Imperial Porcelain Factory.
Capodimonte porcelain is porcelain created by the Capodimonte porcelain manufactory, which operated in Naples, Italy, between 1743 and 1759. Capodimonte is the most outstanding factory for early Italian porcelain, the Doccia porcelain of Florence being the other main Italian factory. Capodimonte is most famous for its moulded figurines.
The Bow porcelain factory was an emulative rival of the Chelsea porcelain factory in the manufacture of early soft-paste porcelain in Great Britain. The two London factories were the first in England. It was originally located near Bow, in what is now the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, but by 1749 it had moved to 'New Canton', sited east of the River Lea, now in the London Borough of Newham
The Imperial Porcelain Factory, also known as the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory, is a producer of hand-painted ceramics in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It was established by Dmitry Ivanovich Vinogradov in 1744 and was supported by the Russian tsars since Empress Elizabeth. Many still refer to the factory by its well-known former name, the Lomonosov Porcelain Factory.
The Vienna Porcelain Manufactory Augarten is a porcelain manufactory located in Vienna, Austria.
Chantilly porcelain is French soft-paste porcelain produced between 1730 and 1800 by the manufactory of Chantilly in Oise, France. The wares are usually divided into three periods, 1730-51, 1751-1760, and a gradual decline from 1760 to 1800.
Mennecy-Villeroy porcelain is a French soft-paste porcelain from the manufactory established under the patronage of Louis-François-Anne de Neufville, duc de Villeroy (1695-1766) and — from 1748 — housed in outbuildings in the park of his château de Villeroy, and in the nearby village of Mennecy (Île-de-France). The history of the factory remains somewhat unclear, but it is typically regarded as producing between about 1738 and 1765.
French porcelain has a history spanning a period from the 17th century to the present. The French were heavily involved in the early European efforts to discover the secrets of making the hard-paste porcelain known from Chinese and Japanese export porcelain. They succeeded in developing soft-paste porcelain, but Meissen porcelain was the first to make true hard-paste, around 1710, and the French took over 50 years to catch up with Meissen and the other German factories.
Real Fábrica del Buen Retiro was a porcelain manufacturing factory in Spain. It was located in Madrid's Parque del Buen Retiro, Madrid on a site near the Fuente del Ángel Caído.
Coalport, Shropshire, England was a centre of porcelain and pottery production between about 1795 and 1926, with the Coalport porcelain brand continuing to be used up to the present. The opening in 1792 of the Coalport Canal, which joins the River Severn at Coalport, had increased the attractiveness of the site, and from 1800 until a merger in 1814 there were two factories operating, one on each side of the canal, making rather similar wares which are now often difficult to tell apart.
The Lowestoft Porcelain Factory was a soft-paste porcelain factory on Crown Street in Lowestoft, Suffolk, England, which was active from 1757 to 1802. It mostly produced "useful wares" such as pots, teapots, and jugs, with shapes copied from silverwork or from Bow and Worcester porcelain. The factory, built on the site of an existing pottery or brick kiln, was later used as a brewery and malt kiln. Most of its remaining buildings were demolished in 1955.
Ludwigsburg porcelain is porcelain made at the Ludwigsburg Porcelain Manufactory founded by Charles Eugene, Duke of Württemberg, on 5 April 1758 by decree as the Herzoglich-ächte Porcelaine-Fabrique. It operated from the grounds of the Baroque Ludwigsburg Palace. After a first two decades that were artistically, but not financially, successful, the factory went into a slow decline and was closed in 1824. Much later a series of other companies used the Ludwigsburg name, but the last production was in 2010.
Falke, Jacob. "The Late Imperial Porcelain Manufactory in Vienna: IV. Fourth Period. Decline and Fall." The Workshop, vol. 8, no. 4, 1875, [www.jstor.org/stable/25586806 JSTOR]
"Lehman": Decorative Arts, Volume 15 of Robert Lehman Collection, 2012, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Authors: Wolfram Koeppe, Clare Le Corbeiller, William Rieder, Charles Truman, Suzanne G. Valenstein, Clare Vincent, ISBN1588394506, 9781588394507, google books
Chilton, Meredith (ed), Fired by Passion: Vienna Baroque Porcelain of Claudius Innocentius du Paquier, 2009, 3 vols.
Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, Rainald Franz (eds), 300 Jahre Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur / 300 Years of the Vienna Porcelain Manufactory (German and English), 2018, Arnoldsche Art Publishers, ISBN3897905302, 9783897905306
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